fandomhigh | BWI Airport | Portalocity Lounge

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!event: newbie shuttle

BWI Airport | Portalocity Lounge | Saturday Morning

Petra was so relieved to find the Portalocity lounge and a banner proclaiming 'Fandom High.' She was pretty sure that meant she was in the right place, even if she did seem to be the first one here, and it meant she could sit down and stop dragging her luggage (two large, new-looking suitcases and an extremely battered green leather overnight case with an Audrey Hepburn decal on top) all over the airport.

She picked out a chair with a good view of the door so she could see new arrivals and sat down with Holly Go-Overnightly in her lap, then pulled her phone out. All her friends were still asleep, no doubt, so texting was out, but surfing the web seemed like a good way to kill some time while she waited for other people to show up. She hoped she wasn't the only new student. That would be awkward.

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Such a greeting would be quite familiar to Rosella, but she did not find it exceptionally comforting. It was the modernity and freedom afforded to girls on Fandom Island that drew her to it, and any call back to her life in Daventry made her a mite suspicious. She did not instantly recognize the girl as some of the other princesses of the lands, which was odd, since she was friends with most of them, but she seemed plucked right out from home. She wondered if perhaps her mother had sent in a spy...to make sure she behaved...

...so she better behave. Even though it killed her do so, Rosella met the bow with a dip of her own head, a spreading of her skirts in a dignified curtsey, and a smiling face of greeting. "It seems," she said in a light tone, "that even in strange lands, courtly souls may find each other."

Really, she should just be glad it wasn't a prince!

"Are you to attend Fandom High as well?"

Lucrezia felt relief, at the shared commonality; a relief that did not seem to be felt by the other girl. Curious. She filed the information silently.

"Is that the name of this university?" she asked. "I only know it's a scholarly institution of some kind. My brother made the arrangements."

"Your brother?" asked Rosella, with a little bit of intrigue. Well, Alexander hadn't exactly made the arrangements for her, but he had paved the way. She didn't recall him mentioning any other courtly friends he may have made, except for that Faramir fellow, but perhaps... "Has he attended the school as well? My brother, Alexander, preceded me in attending. If it weren't for him, I would not even have known of it! But, yes, it's called Fandom High School, on Fandom Island, and, oh," she couldn't help letting a little sigh of excitement gush out of her, "it's a wonderful little place. I always had a fantastic time when visiting him, and the stories he would tell me!"

Her excitement getting the better of her, Rosella now grinned with much less abandon. "I think I should enjoy it quite a lot!"

Lucrezia couldn't help laughing, though it was in a fond manner. She was similarly excited whenever the topic of her brother was raised ~~cough~~.

"He received a letter," she said, "and I know not from whence it came, but he has never been to this place before. Is your brother a member of the Holy Church? Do they perhaps know one another? Cesare never mentioned a friend, but we had so little time."

Any pretense Rosella was trying to hold of being proper fell away exquisitely with a snort; a question like that was not only ridiculous, but it also helped ease any suspicion that Valanice had sent this girl as a spy. Valanice did not have that good of a sense of humor.

"Heavens, no!" said Rosella. "Alexander a member of a church! I can't even fathom it, though he does have a good enough soul for it. No, I do not recall a Cesare among his small list of friends, and if your brother has not attended the school, then there is little chance Alexander would know of him, but I would not."

This news pleased her. If she hadn't heard of this Cesare before and he'd never been on the island, then this girl has probably never even crossed her mother's path. Which meant that an introduction was overdue.

"Oh," she gave a short sigh as if to officially shuck off her formality, "but who cares about our brothers? They are not here, but we are, so we should concern ourselves with that. My name is Rosella, of Daventry. What's yours?"

"Lucrezia Borgia, of Rome," she said brightly. "I'm unfamiliar with Daventry, I'm afraid, but I don't know all of the city-states. My brother married the Duchess of Squillace, so Squillace must be somewhere in Naples, but he confessed to me before his wedding that he didn't know exactly where it was, either."

Lucrezia was unsure if Sancha herself knew. Sancha did not seem concerned with trivialities like that.

Rosella was fighting desperately not to giggle at Squillace, but it was proving to be quite difficult. "I will certainly not hold your unfamiliarity with Daventry against you," she vowed once she managed to get her face under control, "so long as you don't hold it against me that I am unfamiliar with Rome. But I have discovered recently that the world is far larger than we could ever comprehend, so I'm not astounded at all to learn of such new places. As a matter of fact, my brother married the princess of the Land of the Green Isles, and he couldn't even find that place until just about a week ago!"

Lucrezia didn't mean to stare at her new friend, but she couldn't help it.

"Unfamiliar with Rome?" she asked. "But it is the center of the Empire, and the seat of our Holy Mother Church."

If Rosella hadn't heard of Rome, then ... must she not know of those, either? The papacy itself? How could one have never heard of either?

She cleared her throat and hoped to recover herself.

"Daventry must be further even than I had imagined," she said, shaking her head quickly. "Forgive my lack of composure. They're still discovering new continents on this world. We shall be neighbors from afar, that is all."

Edited 2011-08-27 04:20 (UTC)

Really, Rosella wasn't too terribly surprised about the reaction from her friend, and she smiled lightly, impassively, to show that she wasn't at all offended and she was even being good about not bragging about her exposure to the concepts of multiverses and different worlds and all that fun stuff.

Not yet, anyway.

"Not at all," she assured Lucrezia. "I imagine it's quite far, indeed! It practically seems as though it's in a whole 'nother world from this one!"

"Tell me more of this Daventry," she implored. "How do you live, what are your cities like, how do you worship?"

She seemed fair to be Moorish. There were isolated pockets of older pagan faiths, were there not?

"Oh, Daventry is a very quiet little country," Rosella said with a fond smile, "much smaller than anything you'll see here. But it is fair and beautiful, and I shall be proud to rule it one day and make it even better. Despite all my complaints, there really is no lack of adventure there, either in Daventry proper or any of our many surrounding neighbors."

The worship question, Rosella realized she didn't quite know how to answer, and so she just politely passed over it. "And what of Rome? Do you suppose you shall miss it?"

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BWI Airport | Portalocity Lounge | Saturday Morning

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